


We Should Just Kiss Like Real People Do

by jonphaedrus, thetealord



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Depression, Gun Violence, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smoking, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 19:41:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5304338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetealord/pseuds/thetealord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In one dimension, Lee Unwin dies in Argentina and James mourns his husband's death. But when Valentine wins in his world, James knows his isn't the true, prime dimension, and travels to another, hoping he can fix what was destroyed in his own world. He saves Harry Hart's life, even if the man might have preferred otherwise after losing prime dimension's James, his fiancee.</p><p>When Merlin starts getting tips from an unidentified Kingsman agent, Harry and Eggsy go to investigate and find James, somehow alive, but are quickly informed that this James is one from another dimension entirely. Harry is shaken, and after a long discussion James decides it's best that he leave, only to return years later at the end of his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Should Just Kiss Like Real People Do

**Author's Note:**

> For the Kingsman Big Bang! And check out the awesome [fan mix](http://8tracks.com/fanofthefirth/we-should-kiss-like-real-people-do)!

 

( james trevelyan ; lancelot ; 2015 ; **β )**

 

 

We drank the brandy.

 

Arthur gave me the medal.

 

I went home.

 

 

 

The house was quiet, the mews subdued, when I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. It smelled like home always did—dog, paper, varnish, a bit like gunpowder, the ever-present smell of body-spray, and brandy.

 

I had to take a few deep breaths, back pressed against the front door, before I unlaced my shoes and set them on the rack by the door. I bit the inside of my lip and dragged myself up the stairs, trying to keep it together.

 

This was the part of being a parent I had never been ready for—the part where you had to hold it together. Even when you didn’t want to. Even when you couldn’t.

 

I couldn’t even bear to look at the bedroom door, so I walked right past it and went to the second room. I hesitated; it was silent inside, but after a moment I could finally bring myself to knock. “Eggsy?” My voice came out slow and aching with disuse. “Can I come in?”

 

No response. I hesitated, then slowly pushed the door open. His room was a disaster, as always, and I couldn’t bring myself to repeat my oft-treaded admonishment to him and his father about picking things up off the floor. Eliza, curled up on the bed next to him, shifted, perking up when I opened the door, and meowed.

 

“Hey, Liza.” I smiled and closed the door behind me, reaching out to rub her soft, feathery fur before I gently picked her up and set her to the side. I sank down onto the bed. Eggsy was curled into a ball in one of his father’s oversized sweaters and didn’t move until I set my hand on his ankle.

 

“Eggsy,” I murmured. “Little rooster.” He didn’t move any more than to shift, to curl more into the bed. “Eggs. Please.”

 

“Go away,” he said wetly, and I sighed. I settled in next to him, pulling my glasses off and placing them in my interior pocket, lenses pressed up against the fabric of my jacket. I knew Merlin wouldn’t watch. He’d already been through this once before. “Just leave me alone, Da.”

 

“I know, Eggs.” I still didn’t get up. I just sat with him, and then scratched Eliza behind her large ears as she crawled, serpentine, onto my lap. Her purring was soothing, but all it reminded me of was—all it reminded me of was—

 

 

She just reminded me of Lee, holding her while she purred and laughing as she stuck her whiskers in his mouth and _Lee_ who was dead somewhere in Argentina and _Lee_ who would never be coming home and whose son was acting just like him and _Lee_ who was dead and gone and—

 

“I’m so sorry.” It tore out of my throat, and I squeezed Eggsy’s ankle. “I would tell you if I could you _know_ that—“

 

“I know,” he said, hopelessly, and that was what made it worse. Pressing my face into my hand, I let out an aborted sob as he sat up and leaned over into me, face tucked against the pale tan fabric of my coat. He just sat there as I reached in my pocket and pulled out the medal there.

 

“For us, this time?” Eggsy was staring at it, and I nodded jerkily, biting back anything else traitorous before it could come out of my throat. I let him take it and he turned it over in his hands, fingers tracing the date on the back.

 

“Oxfords, not brogues,” he murmured, and that was it, that was all I could handle, that was— “Da, no,” Eggsy managed, and I doubled over, sobbing helplessly, fishing the red handkerchief out of my pocket and burying my face in it before I got snot everywhere. “Da.”

 

“They showed me the photographs,” I managed, wetly, and he made a horrified keening sound and twisted, wrapped his arms around me, and folded down against me, wailing into the side of my jacket. The photos, the ones we had managed to dig up from every other intelligence agency, of Lee, cut in half, of Lee—

 

“What are we going to do,” Eggsy said, finally, _miserably_ , and I shook my head, wiped down my face, ran shaking fingers through my hair, and pulled him closer with one arm around his waist.

 

“Carry on, Eggs. Carry on.” I hesitated. “I’m putting you forward for Galahad. I don’t think he’d rather anyone have it but...you.”

 

That was the limit.

 

That was the floodgates.

 

Lee Unwin was dead, and James Trevelyan and Eggsy Unwin were still alive. And now, alone, I was going to have to finish what he started.

 

 

( james trevelyan ; lancelot ; 2015 ; **β** **α )**

 

“Do you know how disappointed your father would have been?” Were the last words that I ever said to my son, standing in the kitchen of the house that neither of us could even bear to stand in before I flew to Kentucky.

 

I flew to Kentucky, killed rather a lot of people in a small church, got shot, didn’t die, and realised—all too late—what had happened.

 

We—the Kingsman—have known about the “fractured” timelines for years. They’re parallel worlds that exist alongside ours, worlds that had branch off from the prime dimension, exhibiting thousands of other possibilities. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. We’d known about them practically since Kingsman was incepted. There was always a place where things twisted off-kilter, and when I heard over the open comms from the ICU Merlin’s last message from within Valentine’s lair, I just listened to him, closed my eyes, and breathed.

 

We had failed. We had failed, as I listened to him broadcast the last of what they knew, huddled in the cargo hold of the plane. I’d never realized that our dimension was a fractured one, but now that it was clear, I knew what I had to do. I had to travel to the prime dimension, a world separate from ours, and I had to _stop_ it, in the life, in the place, that mattered.

 

 

When I arrived there, using the technology we’d developed to travel between dimensions, I felt the fading light of my dimension behind me, destroyed by Valentine. Even though I knew we were only one of thousands of other worlds that had branched off from prime, that we didn’t really matter in the grand scheme of all things, my heart hurt as I left that world behind.

 

The day I made my way to the Alpha timeline was the day that everything and everyone I had ever known died. Without me there to hold it up, just like they had in previous events such as mine, it just...collapsed.

 

Lee was dead. My Eggsy was dead. I was dead, in every universe but this one, where I had never belonged, and that realisation was.

 

 

But it was a thought I had already come to terms with, the day I drank the brandy, and closed my eyes, and felt my heart and world collapse around me like a house of cards, crumbling apart into nothing but dust.

 

 

I arrived in prime only to watch in horror from the greenbelt behind a Kentucky church as a man I had never really known got shot and died slowly on hot tarmac. But it was not too late to make a difference. I waited until Valentine left before I ducked out of the trees and skirted the edge of the church to kneel by the man’s side.

 

In our world, Harry Hart had died, jumping on a grenade to save myself, Merlin, and Lee, before we’d ever really formed a rapport. I’d never known him, but I knew I had to save him.

 

He hadn’t been as lucky as me—in my life, the bullet grazed the side of my face, and I had only survived by luck and Valentine not checking the body. “You’re an unlucky fuck,” I told Harry, after I ascertained that his glasses were, indeed, shattered beyond repair by the bullet that had passed through the lenses and directly into his left eye.

 

I lifted his head up off the ground, so that he didn’t have to lay in his own blood, and called 9-1-1 with my cell in the other. I told them the location, the number of people that lay dead or dying inside the church—this time not by my hand—and then I held Harry up and waited, his blood matting my fingers as I watched his skin pale, and listened to his breathing slow.

 

“You better not die,” I told him, “Because I didn’t come all the bloody way here just for you to kick the fucking bucket in a car park and ruin all my hard work.”

 

I might never know if what I said worked, but when I watched from afar while they loaded him onto the ambulance, he wasn’t dead. So something had to have done it.

 

I took one last look at the church where, in another life, I had nearly died, and closed my eyes. At that moment, I accepted for perhaps the first time in my life that I could do no more.

 

I spent a very long time aimless. What was I supposed to do? I didn’t have a job, and I had no actual skills, after being in Kingsman for so long. More importantly, in this world, I was dead. I had to be, or I couldn’t have existed there for so long. The only explanation was that the other me, the other Lancelot, had died somehow, so I couldn’t have gotten a job even if I wanted to.

 

Instead, I sat.

 

And I thought.

 

And I waited.

 

And I died, inside, when I had only been dead on the outside before.

 

And then Harry Hart woke up.

 

 

 

 

 

( harry hart ; arthur ; 2016 ; **α )**

 

When James died, there was only one unequivocal fact that remained truly apparent to me, and that was that, despite my heartbreak and anguish, I was to endure the absolute torture of continuing to live. Somehow, morning after morning, I rose and dressed and did my job and somehow, night after night, I returned to sleep only to wake up again.

 

Even my dreams did not grant me peace, filled with images of ways I might have saved him. And it was clear to me, sleep and awake, that I had failed. Failed him, failed Kingsman, and failed myself.

 

Those first few months were the hardest. And then, in Kentucky, when Valentine put the gun to my head and I saw my life flash before my eyes, I thought I might finally be granted peace. And yet, I failed again.

 

I don’t truly know what happened after that. I don’t think I ever will. Next I remember I was waking up six months later, alone in a hospital bed, and then with Merlin and Eggsy standing over me. It was the happiest I’d ever seen the boy. Even Merlin shed a tear or two for the bloody miracle that I had somehow managed to survive.

 

And it seemed it really was a miracle. Someone had shown up in Kentucky that afternoon, scraped me off the ground, and made sure others would find me. They saved my life. Even if I wasn’t sure whether I truly wanted to thank them or not, to see Merlin and Eggsy smiling like that I suppose it was worth it. Although, they both denied having been my proverbial knight in shining armor. They were both on their way to Argentina by that time along with the _new_ Lancelot. So it seemed I would never be able to thank the one who saved me.

 

Still, it was true that a part of me did die that day. The Harry Hart who was Galahad, the Harry Hart who loved James Spencer with all his being, was dead. Even if that thought made me feel… cold, empty, it had to be the truth now. It was the only choice I had left.

 

The Harry Hart who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders as Arthur, the leader of the Kingsmen, was the only Harry that still existed. And the Harry who was Arthur had no time for grief, no room for painful memories, and no desire to play games of the heart any longer. He was strong, and efficient, and cold. Even if I had no choice but to lead them and knew that I could make a difference in doing so, more often than not, I still wished that I was dead.

 

I spent too much of my time brooding, or so Merlin said, but it seemed to be a trait of every Arthur in the past and I had to live up to my title.

 

I sipped cold soup and whiskey as I pored over some files related to the new Galahad’s recent mission. After all of the fuss in Argentina I was trying to start him out small, no more of that ‘save the world as your first mission’ business, and there was quite a lot of cleanup to do after what Valentine had done.

 

The mission I was looking at was only recon, but I had a strange feeling about it as I glanced over the files.

 

“Arthur.”

 

I looked up to see Merlin standing in the door to the dining room, clipboard in hand.

 

“You’re going to want to see this.”

 

I raised my eyebrows. It wasn’t every day I saw Merlin with that look on his face. An interested, but worried look. Merlin was always so sure that it was strange to see him looking a bit at a loss as he came over and set his clipboard down, swiping to reveal a message.

 

_NYC, Manhattan, Lafayette and Nordes, Deli Basement_

 

He swiped to reveal another.

 

_Daniel Groves, 33, 42 Putnam Street, Dalsbury Ohio_

 

 

_Marie Swanson in danger, Paris_

 

Merlin stopped, fingers resting gently on the screen. “Anonymous messages,” he said. “There are others. Someone has been sending us tips. Names and locations, mostly. Always something that’s about to happen. And they’re always spot on.”

 

I raised an eyebrow. “Who’s been sending them?”

 

“That’s the funny thing,” Merlin said. “We don’t have a clue. They’re always sent directly to me, like they’re coming from someone inside, but all our agents have denied being the sender, and no one has been hacking into the system from the outside.”

 

“Strange,” I mumbled. “And how long, exactly, has this been going on?”

 

Merlin paused and then said, “A few weeks, actually.”

 

I turned to level my gaze at him. “And you didn’t tell me about it before now?”

 

“Harry.”

 

Merlin stared at me, the heavy gaze of a friend who worried too much. I looked away, reached for my whiskey and took a sip, then let out a slow sigh before I did something I would regret. “You should have told me,” I said, my voice hard and I knew it was evident how much I was restraining myself. “I am Arthur now.”

 

“And you have bigger things to worry about,” Merlin said quickly. “I was sure it was nothing at first, someone pulling a prank or maybe a misfire. I didn’t need you getting worked up over something unimportant.”

 

“It’s pretty damn important,” I half-growled, grip tightening around the glass.

 

“Harry,” Merlin said, resting a hesitant hand on my shoulder.

 

I let out a slow, deep breath. Getting angry wasn’t about to get me anywhere. In fact it was more likely to get me to a place I didn’t want to be. But I knew why Merlin hadn’t told me, why everyone tip-toed around me, like I might snap if they said the wrong thing or slid one toe out of line. He didn’t think I could handle it. None of them thought I could do this, thought I was better off retiring, or better off dead. And it was terrible and suffocating, feeling like a fish that they all watched from outside, careful not to tap too hard on the glass. And when I’d shouted at Merlin for suggesting I see a psychologist, and when I cringed every time Lancelot’s name came up and she thought I hated her, and when I still remembered _every second of every day_ what it felt like to kill all those people in that horrible little church, why shouldn’t they act that way?

 

“Harry?” Merlin said.

 

I sipped the whiskey again. Sometimes, it helped dull those God-awful thoughts that plagued me.

 

“You traced the message, I assume,” I said slow, quiet.

 

Merlin flipped through a few screens and pulled up a map, motioning to some coordinates. “‘Course I did. Here. They’ve been moving around but that’s the closest I could get. I’ll send Galahad and Lancelot to—”

 

I winced. “No.” Gently, I pushed the soup aside, set my napkin on the table. “Galahad and I will go. Lancelot,” a pause, a breath, “doesn’t need to be involved. I’m sure she’d be more useful elsewhere.”

 

Merlin raised an eyebrow and collected his clipboard. He opened his mouth to say something, stopped himself, then started again. “If that’s what you want, Arthur.”

 

“I wasn’t meant to sit behind a desk, Merlin. I might be old but despite that and whatever other _issues_ you think I might have, just let me have this.”

 

I stood and Merlin took a step back. “All right, Harry,” he said quietly, then turned and I followed him from the room. “I’ll call up Galahad to let him know.”

 

 

 

( harry hart ; arthur ; 2016 ; **α )**

 

 

Eggsy brought JB. I had always liked dogs, but maybe it was too much that I smiled more at the pug than I did at the boy as we got in the car. I’d warned Eggsy that it might be a long trip but didn’t bring much of note myself.

 

We had a driver, because I didn’t drive (not couldn’t, didn’t) and I didn’t trust Eggsy’s driving. He was a good driver, but he did tend to speed a little too much for my tastes. Besides, I didn’t want Eggsy focusing on the road when I was hoping to go over mission details with him on the way.

 

We did, though the drive was long, out into the English countryside, and we spent much of it in silence, too much tension in the air.

 

There were many… unresolved conversations between us. Shooting the dog, for one, and the fact that Eggsy thought I’d never forgiven him for not becoming Lancelot, maybe hoped that he’d made up for it by taking my old title instead. The truth was, it fit him better, and I didn’t care. By the time I’d nearly died and woken up again, it didn’t matter.

 

It didn’t help, either, that I sometimes felt the boy wanted more of a relationship with me than what we had. Regardless of what that might entail, if that was the case, I hoped he understood that it would never be, for a multitude of reasons. But I never said anything about it, and neither did he. That suited me just fine, although it was hard to tell exactly how he felt, and maybe I was wrong. I’d never been the best at reading people. That had always been James’s talent and not mine.

 

Rather than watch him too closely, I stared out the window, watching the countryside flicker by. Farmhouses, hills and trees and the like. Maybe I would have thought it was lovely, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to care or even consider its potential loveliness more than that passing thought. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to care. I did. I knew I needed to get out more, see the world again, be out in the field, and that was part of why I was here. I knew it would be good for me, even if all I really wanted to do these days was lie in bed unmoving and let time pass me by. I very well might have, too, but my duty drove me on, kept me going.

 

Eventually, the car pulled partway up the drive of a small brick farmhouse, then turned to settle in near a copse of trees.

 

Wooden fences spread out to either side, and a barn was settled off a ways to the right. Horses traipsed about in one field, sheep in another.

 

“Is this it?” Eggsy asked, looking confused.

 

I stepped out of the car, leaned on a cane I’d brought with me, and let my glasses adjust to the brighter light outside the car. A glance my watch confirmed the coordinates as the ones Merlin had given us, or fairly nearby. “That seems to be the case, yes,” I said. So I told the driver to wait, Eggsy told JB to stay, and we made our way up to the front door. I wasn’t going to go snooping around the place without knocking first, that wouldn’t be very polite. Not to mention bizarre, if the owner happened to look out their kitchen window to see two men in suits walking around the pasture.

 

With the head of my cane I knocked, then paused and waited. Eggsy stood just behind me to my right, shifting uneasily from foot to foot, just enough to be noticeable. “Stand still,” I grumbled to him, and he stopped.

 

It was quiet. Just… quiet. I couldn’t tell if anyone was home and I didn’t exactly want to go around peering in windows. It occurred to me that if they were home, they might have thought we were here to try to sell them something or preach at them.

 

“Check around back,” I muttered to Eggsy, and he went, slinking around one side of the building while I continued to stand on the front step and knocked again. Better him than me, poking around. At least he looked less threatening than I did.

 

Still, no one answered, and Eggsy came back around a few minutes later, shaking his head. “It’s bloody dark in there,” he said. “Looks like no one’s ‘ome.”

 

I sighed, not sure if that boded well or not. “All right,” I muttered, looking around the pastures, then tapped the edge of my glasses. “Merlin? Any ideas?”

 

“Hold on just a second,” he said, voice clear in my ear. “There aren’t any other residences in the immediate area,” he said after a moment. “Just a heck of a lot of farmland.”

 

“And you’re sure this is the place?”

 

“Completely sure. Try having a look around. You’ve got JB?”

 

“Yeah,” Eggsy chimed in.

 

“See if you can get him to sniff around for anything interesting.”

 

“Pretty sure he’s just going to go for the other animals,” Eggsy said. “But all right. ‘s worth a go.”

 

He went to get JB from the car, the pug pulling a little on his lead as he started sniffing about furiously. I followed a ways behind them as they shot off across the pasture, JB wriggling under the fence and Eggsy being forced to follow rather awkwardly. I climbed over, noting that my joints complained a little and I wasn’t nearly as young as I used to be.

 

The barn was up ahead. I furrowed my brow. Of course JB was heading in that direction. Eggsy was right, he was likely going after the other animals and the barn would smell strongest to him.

 

“Galahad,” I began, hesitating, and still not quite used to calling someone else by my old code name, but Merlin cut me off.

 

“Hold on, Arthur, Galahad. That barn up ahead matches the exact coordinates of at least half of the messages. There’s a good chance our target is inside.”

 

I frowned. Well, that was just lovely wasn’t it?

 

“We’ll be extra careful,” Eggsy promised, and led JB up to the side of the barn, nearly flattening himself against the red wood. I followed, not wanting to be spotted if someone happened to be looking out one of the few windows, although there was a high chance they’d already seen us.

 

JB started growling as we rounded the corner, low in his throat like he used to do when he was a puppy. And then he started barking and I heard footsteps inside and darted ahead of Eggsy, staring in the barn door.

 

It was open on both ends, one long aisle between the stalls before me, a place to hook up and groom horses. There was a ladder propped up near the middle that led up to a space above and someone was scrambling down it, whirling to face me as I yelled, “Stop!” and took a few steps into the dimly lit barn, one hand on the pistol holstered under my shoulder.

 

 

( james trevelyan ; lancelot ; 2016 ; **α** )

 

I am a curious man; I always have been. Lee once said it was possibly my worst character trait. I always took that as a compliment.

 

I was _fascinated_ by Harry. I had never known him, of course, as he had died so young for me, and I followed his misadventures becoming Arthur with a significant degree of interest. Listening to the comm channels, and then, as things began to get heated in the wake of V-Day, by giving a few tips on things I learned through the networks I still had access to, networks that this world’s Kingsman had never thought to tap, and watched his agents, and him, react.

 

I never stayed in one place long. Merlin was a canny old haggis and would’ve caught on _immediately_ and hunted me down, and the moment that my identity was revealed was not-so-metaphorically the end of the line. From old safehouse to safehouse, living on money that I was able to steal, staying under the radar. I sent the emails with tips via more and more heavily encrypted emails, all of them throwaways, always retracing to different IPs. I wiped my laptop every week, uploaded viruses to empty and chew the hard drive to be unusable, and then completely reset to factory settings. I used throwaway phones for all my calls, and kept my own personal phone for emergency uses.

 

Eventually, I settled in an abandoned farmhouse that had clearly been a victim of V-Day, with still working Wi-Fi, and I took advantage of the lull in infrastructure to make the best of it, hiding out in their barn.

 

I should have been smarter, but I overestimated myself. I thought _James, you’ve killed enough idiots running this sort of operation, you can run it better than they did, you know all the tricks_.

 

The slam of a car door was what told me I was wrong. I had been on the move for two weeks, and had come back to wipe my laptop, when I heard it. Dropping to the ground immediately, I peered out the window, where I saw two figures and a dog coming toward me.

 

It took me a moment to recognise the man with the short brown hair and the eyepatch was Harry Hart, but there was—there was. Eggsy, with him, my Eggsy, in a matching suit, carrying a dog under one arm, and I had to clench my jaw, close my eyes, wheeze for a moment to keep from crying before I slid to my feet and finished corrupting the hard drive, then turned and slid down the ladder onto the floor of the barn.

 

They had found where I was hiding out, but hopefully they would be distracted enough by the (unusable) laptop that I would have time to get to my car, hidden in the copse of trees, but when my feet hit the ground I turned and found—

 

Harry, staring at me, his good eye wide, looking like he was about to collapse, and next to him, Eggsy. The look on his face, that he didn’t recognise me at all, hurt like a knife between the ribs and for a moment I couldn’t move, rooted to the spot, like all the air had been slammed out of my lungs.

 

My boy, so grown up and strong, and he didn’t know who I was. He looked at me like he looked through me, and I wanted to call to him, say his name, say—

 

Say that. Harry was looking at me the same way that I was looking at Eggsy, like someone had just wrung his heart through a sieve, and he didn’t quite know where to find it again. Nonplussed, I didn’t know what else to do.

 

So, given the situation, I looked between Eggsy and Harry, said, “Shit,” and promptly turned round and legged it in the exact opposite direction from them.

 

 

 

( harry hart ; arthur ; 2016 ; **α** )

 

 

 

The man inside wore a suit, much like ours. He was tall, about the same height as me, had a build and a face that I knew I would recognize anywhere, and when our eyes met for just a brief moment, it felt like my heart stopped in my chest.

 

The barn was dim but in that exact moment I was so _sure_ it was him, I just froze.

 

“Harry?” Merlin asked, using my real name, hesitant, having seen what I saw through my glasses.

 

I was going mad. I had to be. There were people in the world who looked alike, yes, that had to be it. But I still couldn’t bring myself to move, breathe, do anything.

 

Then the man turned and legged it.

 

Like a bullet Eggsy shot past me after him, dropping JB’s leash and leaving the pug yapping his lungs out at my heels.

 

I lowered my hand, which had been reaching for my gun.

 

“Did you see that?” I mumbled at last, still stunned, but I needed something, some… confirmation that I hadn’t completely lost my mind.

 

“I saw,” Merlin said.

 

“It looked like…”

 

“I know. But it couldn’t have been James, Harry.” Merlin, matter-of-fact as always. “He’s dead.”

 

“I know,” I said, and there was no point in chasing after him now.

 

“Galahad’s on his heels.”

 

“All right,” I said quietly, all the drive suddenly knocked out of me. At least the fact that Merlin had also noticed the resemblance ensured I wasn’t making things up in my head. Wasn’t… seeing faces that didn’t exist.

 

I waited. I heard a thumping sound on Eggsy’s end and a brief cheer and encouragement from Merlin. But it all felt distant, to me.

 

It was all too cruel, too horribly cruel. I had put that part of my life behind me and now, when I’d finally taken up a field mission to help myself forget, this man appeared, who looked so much like him I couldn’t help but remember. What cruel trick was the world playing on me?

 

The other end of the line fell silent.

 

And then Merlin, slowly, said, “Arthur. I think you’re going to want to see this.”

 

I sighed to myself, pushed those thoughts away for now, and picked up JB’s lead, jogging in the direction Eggsy had gone.

 

I found him, out near a copse of trees with a few sheep grazing nearby. Eggsy had the man pinned to the ground, and the man had thrown his hands up in the air, face turned just slightly to stare up at Eggsy with some mix of surprise and awe.

 

“Let him go,” I mumbled.

 

Scrambling for his pistol, Eggsy held it to his head and slowly let him go. The other man scooted out from under him and stood, hands up in the air.

 

“Holy Hell,” Merlin said, now that we could all get a good look at him in broad daylight.

 

JB yapped. Eggsy held the pistol. Merlin fell quiet again. And I just stared at the other man, and felt a little like I was going to faint.

 

 

 

( james trevelyan ; lancelot ; 2016 ; **α** )

 

With a shout, I heard footsteps—Eggsy’s, obviously—behind me and I sped up, flat-out sprinting as fast as I possibly could, but despite my longer stride he had the stamina of a fucking truck, and it didn’t take long before with a triumphant grunt he tackled me head-on like a bloody rugby player and we went down in a heap, Eggsy planting his bony arse in the square middle of my back. “Jesus, that’s my spine,” I said, but he had me down pretty solidly, and I raised my hands when I felt him shifting for his gun.

 

“I don’t know who you are,” Eggsy said, quietly, snarling, “But if you’s going to make Arthur look like that, you and I are going to ‘ave words.”

 

“Oh my god,” I snapped back, trying to twist out from under him, “For god’s sake, I hardly ever even _knew_ the man—” and then Harry stepped out from the barn and kept looking at the both of us, stricken.

 

“Let him go,” Harry mumbled, and Eggsy rolled off of me, his pistol clicking before I climbed to my feet, out of place with my own son pointing his gun at me, and turned to face Arthur, my hands in the air.

 

“This has all been a mistake,” I said, more to Arthur and Merlin in particular than Eggsy. “I’ll admit, I have been working through some of your firewalls, but I thought it was best I remain...unaffiliated. I wasn’t really sure what my position here was, and it seems that I was correct in expecting a frosty reception.”

 

Eggsy glanced between Harry and myself, then trained his gun on me again. The older man didn’t seem capable of speaking. “And ‘o are you then?” He asked, and then paused, eyes narrowed slightly, as Merlin spoke into his ear. “No,” he said, quietly, to his handler, not to me. “That ain’t possible, guv. People don’t just—”

 

“Come back to life?” I finished, for him, and both of the agents froze, staring at me. “No. They don’t. Mr. Hart there was an anomaly, and pure luck and perseverance on his part, with no small amount of help from me at the time.” Harry looked like he was about to collapse. I paused, then, unsure of how to continue.

 

How did I do this—gently?

 

“My name is James Trevelyan. Not...not James Spencer. I’m a Lancelot, but not yours. I came here to try and stop what happened to me, and to my Galahad, from happening to you and yours.” I suppose, by technicality, you could say that I had been...moderately successful.

 

I didn’t say that, though, because the bile in the back of my throat that I had failed Lee _again_ still hadn’t quite left.

 

 

( harry hart ; arthur ; 2016 ; **α )**

 

This had to be some kind of sick joke that someone was playing on me. Or maybe it was all just a dream and if I pinched myself hard enough I’d wake up, and begin another day that felt just as pointless as the last.

 

I could hear Merlin talking to Eggsy and Eggsy talking to… whoever this man was, who couldn’t possibly be my James because he was dead and long, long gone, but none of their words really registered in my head.

 

A part of me was angry, and I wanted to accuse the man of being a fraud and shoot him on the spot, but I knew that if I even tried, my hand would quiver, and I wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger, no matter who this person really was.

 

I was sure I was on the very verge of passing out, and Merlin must have noticed me wavering because suddenly he was saying my name very insistently into my ears, and then James (which it was foolish to think of him as but I did anyway) said my name. Not my first, just my last, but it was enough to catch my attention and shake me at least, in part, back to the present.

 

Wait… what had he said?

 

I moved my mouth but no words came out and he started to speak again, looking at me, only nothing he said made any sense at all. Another Lancelot? It was an obvious lie. How could it be true? Even if, say, time travel or some such was actually possible, he wouldn’t be different. He was talking more like he’d come from some alternate dimension, another truly ridiculous notion.

 

And yet… he did _look_ like him, there was no mistaking that. And I knew him so well… there were maybe some subtle differences. He styled his hair just a tad differently than my James had, and his eyes… they were so sad, not like my James at all, whose eyes had always been bright and mischievous and sharp and beautiful.

 

Despite all that, the words which eventually worked their way out of my mouth were not at all what I’d expected.

 

“You saved my life,” I said. It was a fact, as strange as it was to admit. James—this James—had saved me, and I wouldn’t be standing there without him. Why, I didn’t fully understand, because he clearly didn’t know me, barely recognized me, and just that thought made me ache inside. It hurt.

 

Eggsy looked at me. Merlin had fallen silent, at least on my end. I stepped closer, hesitantly. “Tell me more. Where did you say you came from?”

 

“Arthur…” Merlin warned, but I ignored him. Eggsy seemed like he didn’t know what to do at all.

 

“I want to know,” I said quietly. “Everything. Maybe… we should go inside.”

 

“You _trust_ him?” Eggsy snapped at me, “Are you bloody mad?”

 

“I don’t trust him,” I said, trying to remain calm, even though I felt like snapping, too. “But I don’t have any reason not to, either. Everything he’s done has been for our benefit, we know that to be a fact. I just want to know why, and how, among other things.”

 

Mostly, I wanted to know the whole story, and then I would see if I believed it or not. And then I would decide what to do and how to feel. Until then, I pushed all my feelings down again, let myself become numb, and turned back to the farmhouse. For now, I didn’t want to spend any more time than necessary staring too hard at the man who looked too much like my James.

 

 

 

 

( james trevelyan ; lancelot ; 2016 ; **α** )

 

“You saved my life,” said Harry Hart, and I paused for a long moment, before I nodded.

 

“Yes. I did. In Kentucky, after you were shot.” I didn’t say how—I thought that, somehow, given his expression and how he kept looking at me, that if I told him that I’d cradled his head in my lap, let him bleed out on my thigh to keep the wound from clotting and putting pressure on his brain, that he might actually just collapse. “I tried to save your Lancelot’s life as well...but that. Didn’t. Work. I thought he was...someone else.” Lee’s name caught at the back of my teeth.

 

When Harry—Arthur, now—asked me to explain where I had come from, I grimaced and shook my head. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain all the details—” that was one thing from my own timeline I wouldn’t forget, because we had rules about not telling people from worlds how to use the alternate timelines for a reason, “But I can tell you what’s happened since I got here.”

 

The two of them were clearly having an argument with Merlin, and I sighed as they continued debating, practically ignoring me. I took off my glasses, fiddled for a moment with the knobs on the edges, until I was on the same locked frequency as the other two—if Harry here had been Galahad, no doubt he used the same channel on his private missions as Lee had.

 

“Tell Merlin to just patch me in, please,” I told the other two men, and waited until my earpiece hidden in one of the legs of the glasses buzzed to life before I continued. “I don’t mean either of you any harm, that’s for certain. I wouldn’t have stayed out of your way if I did. The _last_ thing that I wanted was to have this confrontation, believe me.” I hesitated for a moment, and then looked at Eggsy, his blond hair slicked back so perfectly in an imitation of Harry’s, that I knew he could never have been mine. “Eggsy, my dear boy, I couldn’t hurt you even if I wanted to. You and Mr. Hart haven’t got a thing to worry about.”

 

Leaving the question hanging as to how I knew his name, as to what he meant to me, as to—as to what I had left—as to—Lee, I followed Harry back towards the farmhouse, hands in my pockets. He pushed the door open and I came in behind him, the indoors covered in a fine patina of dust since I had been staying in the barn, and I parked myself on a barstool in the kitchen.

 

When the other two men had joined me, and I could tell Merlin was not-so-politely listening in, I cleared my throat.

 

“I come from a timeline...similar, but alternate, to yours. I can’t explain how, and I won’t, even if you attempt to torture me for the information. Where I came from, someone that...wasn’t me, died in Argentina, and I was supposed to die in Kentucky. Valentine won, in my timeline. I couldn’t let that happen.

 

“You live in the Alpha timeline—this is where everything is factual. Prime. The first. I came here to try and stop Valentine, and while I couldn’t save Lancelot in Argentina because I thought he was someone else, I did manage to save Mr. Hart in Kentucky, and I’ve been helping sporadically since then. Perhaps all it took to defeat Valentine was you, Eggsy. I don’t know. But I’m redundant here, now.” I scrubbed a hand through my hair and sighed, not looking at either man.

 

“And I hate to ask this, but it’s why I came here—” I looked up at Eggsy. “Indulge me, please. Where’s your father?”

 

Eggsy stared at me with wide, shocked green eyes. He opened and closed his mouth, looked between me and Harry, and then swallowed.

 

“He’s dead, mate.” There was a thunderous roar. I had known, I had known that had to be the case, when I couldn’t find him. But hearing it— “He died, eighteen years ago, yeah? Jumped on a grenade, he did—for. Not-you, and Arthur here.” My heart was beating so loudly I couldn’t breathe. “Er. Mate, you…?”

 

“Fuck,” I said, eloquently, looking at Harry. “Oh, fuck. He did it to save you. He saved your stupid posh arse. Lee jumped on that stupid grenade for—” Shaking, I slid off of the stool. “I’m sorry,” I said, voice thick, not able to look at Harry, who I had assumed had to live, who had lived when _Lee had died_ , and pushed past the two of them. “I need a moment.”

 

I stumbled outside, my throat tight, and got a few steps out onto the edge of the front porch before I sank down to squat on the edge and took great, ragged breaths to try and calm my racing, beating heart.

 

 

 

( harry hart ; arthur ; 2016 ; **α** )

 

I still didn’t know what to make of the fact that James had saved my life. After everything I’d been through, after I’d dealt with my James’s death, he’d come back for me again and brought me back to life. It was so completely insane I could have laughed. If only he could have known that I would have rather just died, and had that be the end of it. But then, whether he knew me or not I don’t think he could have let me. James always had too good of a heart.

 

We went inside and patched Merlin in, and James—Trevelyan, I reminded myself again—spoke, and tried to explain. I believed that he didn’t mean us any harm, I truly did. No matter where he’d come from, James would never hurt another Kingsman. He was loyal to the core. He would have never been able to do even what Eggsy had done when he’d killed the former Arthur.

 

And whether I wanted to or not, I believed every word James said. I believed that he’d come here to save us, and done the best he could. I believed his story about alternate timelines and universes. I could hear Merlin grunting—skeptically—on the line, but something in James’s eyes told me it was all true. Even if he was a different person than the one I knew, I still liked to think I could read him better than anyone.

 

“You’re not redundant,” I said, as if that would somehow make it better, or less awkward. I didn’t know how he knew Eggsy, or why he asked after Lee, and I let Eggsy answer the question about his father. We hadn’t… spoken about Lee at all since before the church. Another topic that felt pointless to dredge up again. But the news of his death had such a reaction in James I didn’t know what to do.

 

He cursed and suddenly every word out of his mouth, sharp and biting, made me flinch, because yes. If this James had cared for Lee at all, it didn’t matter, because he was long gone. Gone to save me, and Merlin and my James, so many years ago, and it became more and more clear that this James didn’t give a damn about me and that hurt more than all the rest of it put together.

 

Things had been different, it seemed, much different in his world. A world I would and could never know. He shouldn’t even be here, he didn’t belong. And yet, here he was. And if all he’d said was true, he’d come here hoping to find something different, something better than what he’d had in his world. And he’d been wrong.

 

He pushed past us, and I stared after him as he left the house to step outside.

 

“Wow,” Eggsy said. “What’s a matter, do you think?” He looked at me. “You going after him or what?”

 

“I…” I looked at Eggsy and he made an urgent face and jerked his head in the direction James had gone.

 

“Go on,” he said. “You really cared about him, right?”

 

“It won’t change anything,” I said, but in the end I went anyway, because I finally found the space to turn myself back to the mission, and I knew that this Lancelot had been and would be an asset to us, and we couldn’t just let him run away. And besides, I remembered Lee, and Eggsy didn’t. And a small part of me, too, just wanted to see how much of him was the same as the James I remembered.

 

I made my way slowly, not wanting to startle him, across the porch and down a step before sitting down next to him with a quiet sigh, staring out across the pasture.

 

There was a familiarity to it, sitting there next to him, that made my heart clench in my chest. Before the church, if this James had shown up then, and I’d been able to sit next to him like this, I think I might have cried. Now, sitting there, I let the numbness wash over me, the same numbness I forced myself into whenever I started thinking about him again.

 

This was a different James, I had to keep remembering that.

 

“Lee was a good man,” I said, still not looking at him, focusing on the trees and the grass and the fences. “One of the best I ever knew. A far better man than I ever was. In this world, at least.” A different me might have completed that jump onto the grenade, instead of letting his student sacrifice himself. A different me had. I had to wonder, briefly, if that world had been much better off without me. But according to this James, it had all gone tits up and ended up worse than it had here. The successful execution of Valentine’s plan would have meant the end of the world, more or less.

 

“My entire life, all I wanted was to repay him. That was why I recruited Eggsy. I had meant for him to take your… our Lancelot’s place. And then he ended up taking mine instead. But isn’t that just the way of things.” I shrugged a little. “Either way, I think Lee would have been proud of him, and what he’s done. I certainly am. None of us would be here now if it hadn’t been for him.”

 

It occurred to me then that I’d never told Eggsy that I was proud of him. I wasn’t sure if I ever would out loud, but I hoped he knew.

 

“For your sake, though, I’m sorry that I’m here and he’s not, if that was what you wanted. Maybe, for everything to work out, it had to be that way, but at the moment I don’t like it any more than you, considering.” I frowned. I knew I should have said something that would make him come with us, but I couldn’t put together the words in my head. All I could think about was Lee, and James, and me, and that if his reaction meant anything, maybe Lee had meant as much to him as James had to me. If that was the case, I understood his pain like no other.

 

 

 

( james trevelyan ; lancelot ; 2016 ; **α** )

 

My throat hurt, like I was suffering under the flu, like I’d screamed myself hoarse. I knew that wasn’t the case—I just kept panting, like a wounded animal, hardly able to move. The reality, the actual functioning of the situation, was crashing down around my head. It had happened, and here I was. Alone. Utterly, completely alone.

 

Trembling, I took my glasses off and set them behind me on the stoop and buried my face in my hands. It was quiet inside the house, although I could hear Harry and Eggsy talking quietly, and when the door eventually opened and footsteps came out, I almost wanted to petulantly tell whoever it was to go away, like a miserable tantrum-throwing child.

 

Harry Hart sat down next to me, and I sighed. The tension was palpable between us: him, on a knife-edge, me, already fallen. The weight of the depression I had been carrying around for months hung around my neck like a lead weight. I envied him, somewhat. At least he kept moving.

 

I had stopped still.

 

“He would have been,” I confirmed for Harry, quietly. “When I knew him, it was all he ever wanted.” He had never intended for Eggsy to follow in his footsteps, though. He’d always expected that they would have served alongside one another. “We were married,” I added, at last. And now we weren’t. Now we would never be. “Eggsy’s like a son to me. Was. Is. Never will be.” I shut my mouth, before I went any further, motor-mouth spillage going at full speed for no real reason.

 

Somehow, around Harry, I felt simultaneously both utterly comfortable and also completely out of my element. People I expected to be dead had that impact on me, I supposed.

 

However, his words stuck with me, and I sighed, scrubbed my face, and slid on my glasses. “Harry,” I told him, honestly, “If I’d wanted you dead, I would have left you on the pavement in Kentucky to bleed out. I think the time for you telling me to off you is a little past.” I smiled, even though it hurt. “You being dead wouldn’t be able to bring my Lee back—your Lee wasn’t mine. I don’t expect that. It was...foolish of me to think otherwise. You’re someone else, and so was he.”

 

After a moment longer, I pushed myself to my feet, fixed my hair, and snagged my glasses. I handed them to Harry.

 

“I don’t think you need my help any more. You’re all perfectly capable of running your own organisation, and I’ll...just get in the way.” I put my hands in my pockets, and put on my best, lighthearted smile. Disarm your opponent—pretend you don’t care. “Best of luck, Arthur. You don’t need to worry about me getting in your way. I don’t think we’ll ever meet again. Regardless this was…” I trailed off, and the smile faltered. I had to be honest. “You gave me closure I never had before. Take care of Eggsy. He’s a good lad; he’ll do you right. If you ever need me again, I’m sure that Merlin can find me. He’s a jolly old bloke that way.”

 

I couldn’t stand to stay in this stifling life, as someone who was dead. Not just metaphorically, with my family and friends gone, but literally now. James Spencer, and myself by extension, were in the ground.

 

“Goodbye.”

 

It was for the best.

 

 

 

( harry hart ; arthur ; 2016 ; **α** )

 

 

I just didn’t know what to say to him. There was so much I wanted to say, but felt like I couldn’t. I wanted to tell him that James and I had been engaged, practically married. I wanted to tell him that Eggsy was like a son to me, too, and I would have wanted nothing more than to have what he, his Lee, and his Eggsy had. But none of that felt like enough. None of it felt right. No matter what I said, it would feel to me like I was trying to make it sound like my issues were greater than his, and that wasn’t true. It was just shit for both of us, and there was nothing I could say or do that would make any of it better or right.

 

I did smile a little, though, when he said he didn’t want to kill me. I nodded. Even though I knew he was different, some of the things he said were just so much like _James_ it hurt.

 

I looked up at him when he stood and handed me his glasses. I took them, brow furrowed, but after a moment I understood.

 

All at once, my heart was pounding in my chest. I opened my mouth to protest and all the words got caught again and my throat felt tight. As he spoke, as he said goodbye, I couldn’t even bring myself to move or breathe, but my hands shook a little. He might not have been my James but he was _James_ , and as much as it hurt that he wasn’t mine, and as much as it hurt that he was alive and didn’t care at all about me, cared about Lee who was long dead and gone, I didn’t think I could bear to see him leave for good, not again.

 

It was stupid and selfish. It probably would have been best for this James if he did leave, if he didn’t have anything to do with any of us, and just left everything behind and went to live his life somewhere, but at least if that did happen I knew I needed some sort of closure, too. He’d had his. He’d accepted it all, and I was still stumbling over my own words like a bloody teenager.

 

“Wait,” I managed to get out at last, trying so, so hard not to cry. I could feel the tears welling up, like they hadn’t in months. “Please… just… I…. oh, bugger.” I ran a hand through my hair, trying not to mess up the styling too much. I sighed. “Before you go… if you really do want to go, well… you’re right. Our Lee was a different person. Just like  you’re different from our James. But I… don’t know if you know, but I loved him. My James. We were together twelve years. I asked him to marry me, like you married Lee. I don’t expect you to do anything about it, naturally, I just… wanted you to know.” I couldn’t let him go without him knowing, as awkward as I knew it would be, and as selfish as it felt to say it to his face. _Yes, I loved you. The other you_. Maybe he’d feel that was even more reason for him to leave, even if too much of me wanted just the opposite. Just to have him there, even if I couldn’t have him myself.

 

 

( james trevelyan ; lancelot ; 2016 ; **α** )

 

 

He told me he had loved me. The man who was, and was not, me.

I smiled, sadly. “Thank you for loving me,” I told him, kissed him on the cheek.

 

And I left.

 

 

 

( hart|trevelyan ; 20xx ; **α** )

 

A great many years did pass. Sometimes, I wondered where James had gone—Not-James, the James who was not mine. Occasionally, I would ask Merlin if he knew, and his answers were always noncommittal, unsure. We all grew older. My hair went to grey.

 

Eventually, Merlin retired, too old to continue working the hours that, as a younger man, had seemed possible, and a new Merlin took his place. Eggsy became the Arthur-to-be, although there was no future for me but death in office; once again, following in the footsteps of the Arthur who came before.

 

Hopefully with a little less poisoning and stabbing, but in my line of work, you learned to accept what you got.

 

Time heals all wounds, they say. I’m not sure how true that really is, but it does at least dull them. I stopped seeing James in every part of my house—in the hang of the curtains he picked years before, the pattern of the carpet, the old silverware, mismatched, that we’d gathered when we had moved in together. The wound was still there. The wound would always be there. But it hurt, less, with time.

 

 _Closure_ was a hard word to face. It wasn’t true, either. But it was what it was.

 

An end.

 

 

 

One afternoon, in the midsummer, humid and damp after the kind of afternoon rain that drenched but didn’t alleviate the weather in the slightest, my hair curling in the oppressive wet heat after the rain, I came slowly back into the mews nearer to supper than usual.

 

There was a man sitting on my doorstep. I stopped, hand halfway to the pistol under my suit coat, before he looked up at me, a cigarette clamped between his teeth.

 

James at sixty was very different from James at forty, but it was still him. He wore his hair looser, without any product, and longer—it was more grey now than brown, and hung down into his grey-green eyes. He had stubble, almost all grey, grown in around his chin and cheeks. Somewhere in the intervening years, he’d gotten a scar on his right cheek that cut through the stubble and up almost all the way to his cheekbone. There were lines all about his eyes, and deep beside his mouth on both sides. He was wearing a dress shirt, unbuttoned at the collar with the cuffs rolled up, and a pair of worn-out jeans with some faded, weathered boots.

 

He looked...tired.

 

James smiled at me, quietly, and stubbed his cigarette out on my front walk, the embers crushed into nothing but dust before he brushed the ash off of the front step and stood, knocking the rest of the cigarette butt into the gutter.

 

“Hey, Harry,” he said, hands in his pockets. The smile didn’t reach his eyes, not quite. “I thought I should come by. Say hello.”

 

“Hello, James.” The name didn’t feel quite right, didn’t quite fit him. It never really would.

 

“Jim is fine.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I felt odd, going by the same name. I think Jim suits me better, don’t you?” I didn’t comment on it, and after a moment his fleeting, plaster of Paris smile faltered. “Can I come in?” He said, at last. I nodded, stiffly, and opened the front door.

 

He stepped in, silently, as I locked the door behind him, and stared around the house, taking it in.

 

Wondering, maybe, what his double had left behind that he hadn’t ever touched.

 

“Why are you here?” I said at last, hanging up my coat. I couldn’t look at him for long—this ghost, holding the space that my James had left, alive when he should be dead. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

 

“I wasn’t,” he said, at last. “You didn’t need me in your way.” He scratched the side of his face, and then sighed. “Listen. I got diagnosed with lung cancer, about two months ago. It’s still treatable, but I was wondering if I could stay here. Not...here-here. With Kingsman. I don’t have anywhere long-term of my own right now, so if I could possibly pull a favour…” My breath caught in my throat.

 

My first, desperate gut response was to say no. No, he couldn’t stay. No, it would be easier if he was dead, like he was supposed to be.

 

“Yes, of course,” I managed at last. “I’ll speak to Merlin about it. I’m sure there’s somewhere for you.”

 

“Thank you,” he said, quietly. I couldn’t go on looking away from him; I finally turned around, and he was looking at me, considering. Thoughtful.

 

“I can see why he loved you,” Jim said, at last. “If you’d lived, for me, I probably would have.” For a long moment, I said nothing, and as I opened my mouth to respond, he continued. “I don’t know if you still want to be alone—God only knows, you’ve been abandoned by me twice; once should have been enough for one lifetime. But if you want to give a second chance—if you…”

 

“Yes,” I said, without thinking, all at once. “Yes, of course. Yes. If you want. If you want to try.”

 

He smiled at me, and this time, it reached his old, tired eyes. So much older than mine—how many years had he lived, without me, without Lee?

 

I smiled back.

 

“Welcome home, Jim.”


End file.
